The After Party2012

In 1993, the film THE LAST PARTY was released. The documentary followed Robert Downey Jr.'s initiation in to the world of politics. In 2000 came the sequel, THE PARTY'S OVER, following Philip Seymour Hoffman on the campaign trail. The third film in the trilogy, THE AFTER PARTY, is a documentary about a journalist who is caught in a mass arrest in August of 2004 (during the course of the Republican National Convention) while filming a protest at Ground Zero. Over 1,800 people were arrested. Michael Schiller's videotape leads to a landmark First Amendment case, Schiller vs. the City of New York, which uncovered a warrantless police spying operation and launched Schiller's personal investigation into the weird world of domestic surveillance. THE AFTER PARTY brings together pop culture, politics and a flair of 'gonzo' journalism, with special appearances by Andre ’3000′ Benjamin, Barack Obama, the Bush twins, Cornel West, Al Sharpton and Don King. This film takes a hard look at the precariously thin line we walk between security and freedom and examines the resurgence of domestic surveillance in America. It is the exclamation point at the end of a political documentary trilogy twenty years in the making.

Pre-Citizenfour (by a decade) surveillance tactics deployed by the New York City Police Department in cooperation with the Republican National Convention. Mass arrests and constitutional violations while Cheney wraps himself in the bloody flag of 9/11. Disturbing in the infiltration of protest groups by federal and other agencies.

The film continuously pits "freedom" against "security," and in doing so accepts and reaffirms the very terms of the ideological binary that mystifies class exploitation and imperialist genocide, the true sources of both American "freedom" and American "security." The United States has always been a terrorist police state; it is not a recent perversion that the State uses surveillance to repress anything it perceives as a potential challenge to prevailing material relations. The story "these people did nothing wrong so why were they arrested?" is neither interesting nor radical. It offers a complete misunderstanding of the nature of the State and of meaningful resistance, both organizationally and discursively.